


Autumn Fairytale

by icarus_chained



Category: Original Work
Genre: Courtship, Elves, F/F, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Fairy Tale Elements, Fantasy, Food, Grandparents & Grandchildren, Hopeful Ending, Lost Love, Monsters, Original Fiction, Storms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 02:59:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12334119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: My granny told me to always have some bit of food on me, for the elf in the woods under the hill.





	Autumn Fairytale

**Author's Note:**

> A little thing for autumn

My granny told me to always have a biscuit on me, if I went walking the old paths under the hill. In the autumn, particularly. When the leaves turned and the wind blustered and battered and moaned. If I was up in the woods, she said, make sure to have a biscuit on me. Or an apple, or a handful of nuts, or the last bit of bread from the loaf. Some little thing, some bit of grub to be shared. 

There's an elf up there, you see. There's an elf up there come autumn, a bright figure in red and silver under the trees. I've never seen her, but my granny described her to me. Armoured in brown and silver, in a cloak of rust and fallen leaves. Her hair a banner of red, her eyes the gold of autumn sunshine, a copper-bound sword of dark grey steel in her hand. She stands up there as the year turns. She waits in the woods for the storms and the shadows and the spirits of darkness and greed to pour down across the valley. 

Then she fights them. All autumn long, and into the depths of winter. Until the year turns again, and the days begin to lengthen, our warrior in the trees stands firm and turns evil away from our valley. 

No one knows about her. Not anymore, not these days. But my granny did. My granny told me.

Have something small to share with her, she said. Have some little thing to offer our elf beneath the trees. It's hungry work, standing guard on our little valley. Lonesome work as well, to stand all year and wait for monsters. Have something good to offer her, should your paths ever happen to meet.

Why, I asked once. Can she not feed herself up there? Is there nothing for her to eat?

Don't be rude, my granny snapped at me. What does it matter if there's all the world to eat? Isn't she doing right by us up there? Doesn't she keep us safe? Are you that stingy, that you couldn't break a biscuit in half as a thank you?

And I listened then. Not because it was good sense and good manners, though it seems it was that too. No. I listened because it wasn't often my granny snapped at me. I listened because she was sweet as red apples most of the time, and she wouldn't snap without reason.

I'd think about the elf after that. When I was up in the woods, watching for a glimpse of red and silver between the trees. During the storms in autumn, when the winds howled around the house and through the eves, and I wondered if she were fighting monsters on the lip of the valley. On Hallows Eve, when souls and spirits wandered freely. In the long nights of winter, when the snows were thick and the woods were bare, and I wondered if she still had her cloak of rust and fallen leaves. I thought about her for many years, our elf beneath the trees.

I thought about her more when granny faded. She lived to a good old age, my gran, but she didn't live forever. Her mind wandered as her winter crept upon her. I learned some other things then.

She used to gather blackberries in the woods, my granny. When she was a girl. She used to wander all the paths under the hill. She had an apron full of berries the day she met our autumn elf. She saw a red and silver thing beneath the trees. A woman, stern and fair, with silver armour and rust-red hair. She nearly lost her berries at the shock of it. And then, when nothing happened, when the elf made no move and no sound save to look at her, my gran looked down at her little pile of sweet blackberries, and held them out in offer. 

Manners, I used to wonder, or some hint of something more mischievous? I imagine it, sometimes. Some stern, regal warrior, picking purple berries gingerly from my granny's apron. There's times I do wonder about my gran.

She went up often after that. Not just for berries, but for our elf. She told me about that, those last few months as her mind wandered. Pulled it up as sweet remembrances, smiling to herself in the autumn sunshine through the kitchen window. Looking up at the woods on the hill, and smiling the sort of smile I used to see pointed at my granddad.

She brought our elf a bit of every morsel she could think of, I think. She brought her crab apples, tart and green. She brought her soda bread with thick butter and cheese. She brought her oat cakes and a cup of stolen honey. She brought her cans of milk and sweet cream and cold honey tea. Any little thing she had to offer, she brought our elf. Anything she could beg or borrow or gather or steal. She brought them all. 

Because the elf smiled, she said. That first afternoon, with the blackberries. She'd smiled, sweet and amused, at the offer, and my granny had determined to see that smile again. She'd brought every morsel under the sun, in hopes of winning that smile again.

I think she did. I hope she did. I'm not sure what happened after that. Those first few autumns, where my granny courted an elf and won her smile. I know something did. My gran married my granddad, after all, and raised six children in the valley under the hill. Something happened, to turn her eyes from a warrior elf to a clumsy young man with a bicycle.

I know there was a storm, a year or so before she and granddad married. The worst storm in living memory. It was more than granny who told me about that one. A huge wind whipped up behind the hill. Tore down trees. Tore down sheds. Ripped all the tiles off the church roof and brought the big tree on the green down on top of the inn. It was a monster of a storm, that year. It howled for three days and killed two people.

It nearly killed my granny. It was granddad who told me that, not her. She'd been in the woods when it came down. She was missing for three days, the whole length of the storm, and when she walked her way down at the end of it she was bruised, scratched and feverish.

Even then, when I was young, I wondered about that. The monsters came with the storms, granny said. Our elf stands guard and fights them. I wondered what had happened those three days long before I found out that my granny had been courting our elf. I wondered about it one whole lot more afterwards.

Whatever it was, though, whatever she'd seen those three days, it didn't make her love our elf any less. Not given the way she talked about her. She gave up on courting, I think, she gave up on having a life together, but she never stopped loving the elf beneath the trees.

We buried her with granddad in the old churchyard. She died in midwinter, at the turning of the year. We buried her side by side with her husband, and with a biscuit in her pocket.

And I keep one in mine too. Even now, even still. I keep a biscuit in my pocket, or a crab apple, or some handful of nuts or raisins. I walk the paths under the hill, I keep an eye out for flashes of red and silver between the trees, and I make sure there's always some little thing in my pocket, some bit of grub to be shared. For our elf. For our guardian beneath the trees.

Just like my granny told me, I make sure to always have a biscuit on me.


End file.
